Examination of the prior art yields a variety of designs, compositions and structures of porous composite pads and stamp pads. Some are made of felt material and covered with woven fabrics. Others are made of open-cell foams or are made of gel-like materials. In particular, stamp pads of the prior art which utilize fibrous materials suffer from lack of uniform and accurate transfer of ink from the pad to the raised points side of the stamp. This lack of uniformity and accuracy may be attributable to the use of coarse fibers in the stamp pad or due to the coarse structure of the woven fabric covering the stamp pad surface. Coarse fibers, in a low density structure, provide a higher capacity of ink retention between them, i.e., a higher-capacity ink reservoir. Finer fibers, on the other hand, yield better accuracy and uniformity of ink transfer to the raised points of the stamp but suffer from having a reduced ink storage capacity.
The present invention overcomes this problem and provides a porous composite pad especially suitable for use as a stamp pad that has high ink retention/storage capacity as well as excellent uniformity and accuracy of ink transfer from the stamping face of the stamp pad to the raised points/surfaces of the stamp.